Seven questions for Rick Perry

When the GOP presidential wannabes brought religion into the race they opened the door to questions relative to religious perspectives in their professional and personal lives. The most overt offender is Rick Perry, with Bachmann not far behind. But since Bachmann has as much chance of winning the nomination as she has of growing a penis, or Sarah Palin has of developing a fully formed brainstem, it is Perry who needs to belly up to the bar and answer some questions.

Unfortunately the media is largely uncomfortable posing the fundamentalist nutter challenges. On the rare occasions where religion questions are raised the candidates quickly take the offensive and claim media bias, or adamantly protest that their religious comments were taken out of context. This tends to make the media less than aggressive lest they be perceived as partisan or worse...atheist.

Therefore I composed a list of questions which were submitted to Rick Perry through his site Here are the questions I think the American freethinking public, and all liberty loving voters, are entitled to have answered by Gov. Perry.

1. As a pet owning , Pre-Tribulation Rapture believing Christian, have you made arrangements for the care of your pets in the event the Rapture occurs in their lifetime? If not, why do you condemn your pets to a slow and hideously agonizing death by thirst or starvation?
   
   



2. Since you have openly declared man made global warming a fraud at worst, or a scientific error at best, and reject the opinions of 98% of climatologists who state it is real; if 98 cardiologists said your child needed immediate heart surgery and would die if he didn’t have it, and 2 said there was no problem, would you similarly ignore the advise of the 98% of those people of science?
   




3. Back in April you appealed to your Texan constituents to join you in prayer to God to end the drought. After six months the drought has still not been broken, and worse...it seems God saw fit to permit the worst wild fires in the state’s history. How do you reconcile that with a loving God, a God who hears the prayers and desperation of his creations, and the efficacy of prayer? And on a related note: since you claim that “political office is a pulpit”, and God put you in it and gave you the original “calling” to run for president; wouldn’t it be reasonable to believe that God’s fiery reply to your prayer for rain is an indicator he changed his mind? Will you obey him and remove yourself from race for the nomination?





4. In May this year you were quoted as saying “It’s time to just hand it over to God and say ‘God, you’re going to have to fix this.’ ” as a way to resolve the country’s most pressing problems. Have you officially handed it over to God to resolve our economic and social problems? If not, why not? If so, why do we need you to be president, why can’t God just be president and have a democrat as a vice president? And a follow up to that question: If God is now responsible for fixing things in this country, how long must we give him to resolve the problems? Will it be in God’s 1st or 2nd term? If things get worse under God’s administration would you lead a movement to have him impeached? Or would you just ignore the failure, like the pray for rain fiasco, and come up with a new religious platitude about God ?



5. If elected to the presidency, do you plan to sponsor and lead national Christian only-Jesus praising-prayer meetings, like you did in Texas - joining forces with Christian Dominionist radical clergy of whom at least one sees the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of Satan? Or will you also be promoting Hindu, Muslim, Wiccan, and other religious prayer meetings that exclude Christians? If so, for what purpose, since your last prayer rally didn’t have any practical value or measurably beneficial affect? Or will this just be your version of the Nuremberg rallies?


6. As a dedicated lover of Jesus the “Prince of Peace,” how do you reconcile your being the greatest executive executioner in our nation’s history? Since you have no qualms talking on behalf of Jesus and since Jesus was himself a victim of capital punishment, what would Jesus say about it and the apparent glee your Christian supporters have exhibited over your execution record?
   



7. Relative to the US being a “Christian Nation” as you have implied and as many of your supporters have asserted, how do you reconcile that perspective with the words and will of some of our most respected Founders?:
   
   “Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.” - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptists, 1802

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common Law.” -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

“I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1799

“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” - Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. ... . It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.” -- John Adams, "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" (1787-88),

“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson

“What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.”-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794


I received the automated “thanks for your email” reply. I don’t expect anything more. After all, a genuine response would require intelligence, introspection, and intellectual honesty... qualities that Perry won’t even pray for.